


Land of the Lost

by witling



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:57:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witling/pseuds/witling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Going through the portal felt like a quick dousing with cold water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Land of the Lost

Going through the portal felt like a quick dousing with cold water, except instead of getting wet they were suddenly reeling on a wide red plain. A desert. There was a weird look to the light, everything was sort of purple-red. The air smelled flat and strange. Harris was bent over, gasping. It took Spike a second to realize they were the only ones there.

"What the fuck—" He turned in a quick circle, hoping stupidly to see a door shimmering behind them, a neon sign reading _This way back._ Nothing. Just the weird sunlight and a hundred miles of red dust. The sunlight, he realized, wasn't burning him to ash. He was standing in broad daylight, and he was fine.

"I think," he said, and turned back to Harris. Who was kneeling down puking, his fingers clawing the dust. After a moment's hesitation, Spike crouched down. He felt fine, he felt better than fine. Confused, annoyed, but warm for the first time in more than a hundred years. "You feeling all right?"

Harris wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, and Spike noticed the beds of his nails were blue. The air—it smelled strange, maybe it really was strange. Harris's back was heaving like a bellows, and a line of sweat was darkening the center of his thin summer jacket.

"Hard to breathe?" Spike asked, and Harris nodded. Slowly, he eased back onto his heels, grimacing at the wet pool he'd yakked up. Already it was sinking into the cracked, dry earth.

Spike shielded his eyes with his hand and looked around. There was a blue ridge in the distance, probably hills or mountains. "Looks like Red balled things up, doesn't it?"

Harris was staring around, his face white except for two red spots of color in his cheeks. His lips were bluish too, and there was sand on his mouth where he'd wiped it. There was a little starburst of blood in the white of his good eye. He took a long, careful breath, and licked his lips.

"Where are we?"

"Not a fucking clue." Spike jumped to his feet and squinted at the blue ridge. "But I say we head for those hills."

Harris looked that way and shook his head. It took him a minute to gasp, "What—hills?"

"Trust me, they're there. You just can't see them yet."

"I can't—" Harris's breathing got the better of him, and he paused, got a handle on it, then tried again. "We should stay here."

"Why?"

"The portal—"

"You see a portal?" Spike waved a hand behind them, where the portal should have stood. "It's gone, mate. And if I know portals, there's no point hanging around waiting for it here."

Harris stared at him, breathing hard, not bothering to ask why.

"Because," Spike said, extending a hand down. "Portals don't work that way. They're going to figure out where we are, and they're going to open another portal back, but it's not going to be here."

"So…where…?"

"Again, not a fucking clue. But there's no point staying here getting sand down our backs while we wait." Spike twiddled his fingers. "Come on, get up."

Slowly, Harris put his hand in Spike's. His skin felt hot and damp. The touch of their hands seemed to spark the obvious realization in him, and he stared at Spike with new surprise.

"Like watching a penny drop." Spike felt inexplicably cheerful, all things considered. "You may be slow, but you're irritating."

"You're not—" Just that much made him buckle, his weight suddenly all on Spike's hand. Spike caught it and held him until he could lock his knees again.

"It's a good thing I'm not on fire right now, or you'd be buzzard food." Spike hauled Harris's arm around his neck and started walking. "In fact, you'd better be bloody nice to me for the next little while. I can always tell them you didn't land here with me."

He was only joking—he had the soul now, after all—but Harris's arm tightened and his breath got even shallower and faster, and soul or no soul, Spike couldn't help feeling a little bit pleased with himself. He hadn't lost his touch completely, at least.

 

 

The blue ridge turned into a line of grey cliffs, about a hundred feet high and pocked with caves. By the time they were close enough to see that much, the light was almost gone. That wasn’t a problem—Spike could still see in the dark—but he missed the warmth. It was getting very bloody cold, he realized, stumping along with Harris dangling off his shoulder.

"You all right?" he asked, tugging slightly at Harris's wrist as if he could be talking to anyone else. "Freezing to death or anything?"

Harris coughed, tried to say something, and couldn't get past a few nasty-sounding wheezes. He sounded like a man breathing through a straw. High-pitched and whistling.

"Almost there," Spike said, and picked up the pace.

They weren't almost there, though. Deserts were like that—there was too much empty space, so everything looked close when it was really miles away. Harris's breathing got worse and he started to shiver. Just a bit at first, then more violently. Finally Spike had to admit that they weren't going to get to the caves tonight, that they had to figure out something else.

"Okay," he said, stopping and easing Harris down into the dust. "You sit there a mo. I'll be right back."

Harris didn't say anything, which was troubling. Spike left him slumped in a pile and trotted out on a quick recce for firewood. Bushes, tumbleweeds, anything that would burn. There wasn't much. He mostly found little tussocks of dead grass and bare twigs, nothing worth collecting. Then he stumbled over a dead tree half-buried in a drift of dust: jackpot. He hauled it out and broke off its branches, lit it up with his Zippo, and went to get Harris.

Harris was unconscious, or asleep. Spike decided to go with the latter.

The flames were strange, like everything else. They were redder than the flames he was used to, and they didn't throw as much heat. Still, when he spilled Harris carefully off his shoulders onto the ground, the fire seemed to do him good. He opened his eyes and lay blinking at it, opening and closing his mouth.

"You look like a fish," Spike told him.

Harris gave him a baffled, dopey look.

"Of all the people to get chucked through the revolving door with." Spike sat down beside Harris's head and lit a cigarette. "Remind me to have a private word with Red when we get back."

Harris's eyelids sank, and his breathing steadied to a shallow, constant gasping. Spike smoked moodily, watching the red flames eat the wood. When his cigarette was gone he sighed, zipped Xander's jacket all the way up to his chin, then settled down into the dust beside him and stared up at the unfamiliar stars.

 

 

He woke to a red dawn and a momentary panic before he remembered the new state of things. Someone was breathing fast, too fast and shallow. Harris. Harris couldn't breathe here, oh yeah, right.

Spike sat up slowly, wiping grit from his eyes. Harris was already sitting up, trying to stand by the look of it. He lost his balance and caught himself with his palm against the ground, wavered, and seemed ready to go down completely.

Spike reached out and caught his leg, just above the knee. He could feel the muscle working hard, rigid and trembling.

"Going somewhere?" he asked, looking around vaguely for his cigarettes.

Then something bludgeoned him in the middle of his back, knocking him into the dirt. He rolled with it, confused and pissed and already back on his feet, his face peeling open, the teeth out. Something was on top of Harris, something huge and dusty and furry, riding him into the ground with big claws in his shoulders. It looked like a cat. Maybe it was. It had a tail, so Spike grabbed the tail and yanked, and there was a complicated snapping sound and the cat screamed and whipped around and came at him instead.

It was some kind of mountain lion maybe, some prehistoric version ten feet long without the tail, with dusty flanks and a lean belly and no fear at all. It came at him like he was prey, like he was mountain lion food. Fast and vicious, swiping with its long sharp claws. He dodged the cut and roared back, feeling ten times the vamp he'd ever felt before, something in the air or the light giving him full animal license. It was as if something had snapped, or fallen into place. It felt absolutely right, absolutely good. The cat danced forward with its front paw out, playing him like a mouse, and he stepped into the claws, caught them, and broke its arm. Leg. Whatever.

It screamed again and started a windmilling scramble with its back legs, ears flat against its skull, fangs exposed. He hung on and it tried to bite him, so he caught its head and bore it down, tore into its neck with his teeth, and drank hot cat blood direct from the tap. It tasted meaty and rich, intoxicating. He could feel its hind legs struggling, trying to gain purchase and disembowel him even as he killed it. He bled it until the struggles stopped, until it was just a warm lax cat asleep in the sun.

The blood haze didn't fade, though. When he could tell the cat was dead he pushed it away and staggered back, wiping his mouth and feeling the hard sharp press of his fangs against his arm. He felt drunk, half-crazy, totally brilliant. Violence sang tribute songs to itself in his brain, in his spine. He turned and saw Harris lying belly-up in the dust, eyes wide, struggling to breathe.

"You see that?" He reached down, grabbed the cat's head, and hauled it up to eye level. Bloody froth dropped from its mouth. Its eyes were dull and orange. The same color as his own, almost. "You owe me one, Harris."

Harris nodded, crawling backward in the dust. He was afraid, Spike realized. With the realization came a rush of power and almost sexual pleasure, a feeling he hadn't had in years. Foggily, he wondered if he should be doing this. If he should be feeling any of this, or if it was something he should try to stop. He didn’t want to stop it. He wanted Harris to see what the real Spike was like, the real William the Bloody. Not the domesticated version, the California version, the one with the soul and the human friendships. He was a master fucking vampire, and for the first time in ages, he actually felt like it.

"You owe me one," he said again, dropping the cat and walking over to stand with one leg on either side of Harris's chest. With the toe of one boot, he nudged Harris's ribs. "You owe me two, actually. You'd be dead twice now, if it weren't for me."

Harris was nodding, gasping, his eyes fixed on Spike's face. Something fell onto his forehead—a drop of blood. Spike wiped his mouth, examined the blood on it, then flicked it onto Harris. He was starting to feel strange, sort of woolly and confused. "I'm going…for a walk."

The sun was giving him a headache. He felt ill. He needed to move, to get away from the sound of Harris's gasps.

He wandered out into the desert, leaving behind the dead cat with the flies already hovering over it, and Harris. Flecked with blood and breathing hard.

 

 

By the time he wandered back, he felt almost normal again. His body was loose and tired, as if he'd been fighting for hours. He wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep.

Harris wasn't with the cat, but he'd left a weaving, staggering set of tracks leading toward the cliffs. The cat, Spike noticed, was practically decapitated. He didn't remember biting that deep, or that hard. But he remembered the taste of the blood, and the feeling of something in him finally seated just right, finally doing its job. It was bizarre, like remembering a dream in which everything is perfect in the world. He stood for a couple of minutes looking down at the cat, then started in the direction of Harris's tracks.

It took half an hour to catch up with him. He was sitting on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chest and his forehead on his knees, not moving. When Spike crouched down beside him and touched his shoulder, he started and almost toppled over.

"You all right?" Spike checked Harris's neck, remembering the way the cat had pinned him. No marks as far as he could see, thank God. "Any bites?"

Harris was staring at him, his eyes wide and frightened, and Spike frowned. "What?" He remembered he had dried blood on his face, all down his throat. "Sorry—can't really wash up around here."

That didn't seem to make Harris feel any better, and Spike had a faint intuition that he'd done something wrong. Well, he'd killed the thing that was trying to kill Harris. Trying to kill them both. That had to be worth something, didn't it?

"Stop looking at me like that," he said irritably, and held out his hand. "Come on, you'll never make it at that pace."

Harris swallowed and closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around as if he were looking for something, anything, any other option than this. Again, Spike felt a faint twinge. Against his own best judgment, he said, "I'm not going to hurt you, all right?"

Harris gave him an uncertain look. There were blue circles under his eyes, and the cords in his neck were standing out. He was exhausted, Spike realized. Probably couldn't sleep properly, if he couldn't breathe. What a fucking mess.

"Come on," he said again. "Let's just get there and find somewhere to kip. They'll get us back soon." He stopped just short of saying, _Promise_.

Harris dipped his chin, took a long shivering breath, and raised his arm. Spike pulled him to his feet. They started walking for the cliffs.

 

 

It was late afternoon by the time they got there, and the sun had been broiling the whole way. Spike's skin felt itchy and tight, and he wondered if he could still get sunburn. Harris was exhausted, a dead weight dangling off Spike's shoulder. His breathing sounded a bit better, but his lips were parched white and the sun had cooked his brain. He kept trying to say things, little fragments of words like torn-up slips of paper dropping all over the desert along the way.

"Uh-huh," Spike said, to be agreeable. "Is that so. You don't say."

The shadow of the cliffs was small but it was enough, and there was water in a little rivulet coming down the rock into a pool. All kinds of tracks in the dust, but no time to think about that right now. Spike put Harris down in the shade and went to soak his shirt in the water. First he washed his face and neck off—the blood was caked and itching badly. Then he came back and dripped the shirt over Harris's face, into his open mouth. It cooled him off and after a few minutes he opened his eyes and stared up in confusion.

"Still alive," Spike said, smiling. "Long odds, but who's keeping track?"

Harris licked his lips, reached for the shirt, and when Spike gave it to him, sucked on it. It was strangely affecting to see. His throat worked and his fingers tightened desperately into the material. Spike watched with candid interest, unsure why he even wanted to.

Finally, Harris rubbed the cool damp cloth over his eyes and let out a soft moan. He took a breath, looked around, and said, "Africa?"

"Portal."

Harris's face fell, and Spike felt a stab of pity. He took the shirt and carried it back to the pool to soak it again. "You breathing any better?"

Harris took an experimental breath, then another. "Yeah," he said, sitting halfway up and propping himself on his elbows. "I…think so."

"Sounds like it." Spike pulled the shirt out of the water and wrung it halfway dry. "Keep that on you for a bit. You got baked today, walking here."

Harris took the shirt and pressed it to his face without argument. Spike stood studying the wide red plain, the wavering purple heat, the lack of any movement. At least, any movement he could see.

"When do we get another portal?" Harris asked, from beneath Spike's wet T-shirt.

Spike put his thumbs into the small of his back and popped the vertebrae with a sigh. "Not a fucking clue."

 

 

Spike went foraging for firewood again, leaving Harris propped against the base of the cliff, staring pensively out into the desert. There wasn't much wood around, not until he found a bigger rivulet of water coming down from the rocks, making a little stream surrounded by grass and bushes. It must have been bigger, once—there were dead bushes and little dead trees all around. He snapped a couple of them off at the base and dragged them into a pile. It was dusk again by the time he started back to get Harris.

He felt good, he realized. The air was cool and purple, more beautiful than the tropical sunsets people paid thousands for back in the real world. The rock beside him was still warm from the sun, and he dragged the fingers of his left hand along it as he walked, just for the feel. He'd eaten well, and he felt sleepy and content. If he had to get tossed through a portal, he could have done a lot worse. In fact, he was starting to feel a bit as though this was a better deal than the world he'd come from. All it needed was whiskey and cigarettes, and maybe a couple of racetracks, and it'd be perfect.

Approaching the pool, it took him a couple of seconds to realize that Harris wasn't alone there anymore. It was actually baffling at first—who the hell was that, standing shaking a stick at Harris's head? Spike's brain felt slow and syrupy. Some kind of monkey. Or a man in a monkey suit, maybe.

The monkey brought the stick down hard on Harris's shoulder. Harris's head cracked the rock behind him, and he rolled sideways and tried to scramble to his feet. The monkey hit his legs, yelling. Did monkeys yell?

It didn't matter, because Spike was already running, covering the distance between them in a couple of seconds, getting there just as the stick came up again, and roaring. Yelling. He was yelling, like the monkey, but it felt like a roar, like his guts and tonsils were vibrating with the sound, like the air was shaking in front of him. He was in game face, but it felt different. More advanced, more complete. Like it wasn't just his fangs dropping, the ridges welling up, some piddling half-human threat display watered down by centuries of lurking in the shadows. It felt like everything about him took part in it, head to toe, like his shoulders rose six inches and his lungs grew. Like he gained actual mass. A mass of rage and teeth. He felt like something very old and strong was clambering out of him, something he'd never known was there at all.

The monkey—it was a man, some kind of man, with a distorted monkeyish face—turned and screamed when it saw him. It was terrified, he could smell the fear rolling off it. In a perfect ecstasy of fury, he launched himself into it. He could feel it hitting him with its club, faint distant taps on his shoulders and back. He ignored that, digging deep into its skin with his fingers, plowing wet furrows. The smell of blood sprang into the air. There were high-pitched mewling sounds, choking sounds. It kicked and struggled, and he held it down, reared back to look into its stupid fucking face, its rolling eyes. It had been hitting Harris with that stick of its. He ought to use that stick to gut it.

Instead he tore its throat out, his fangs shearing through fur and skin and tendons, meeting with a gritty click. The blood jumped out and smacked him in the face, and he drank it in. It was ranker than the cat blood, but just as rich with adrenaline. With fear. Everything here feared him. He was the strongest thing in the wilderness, the king of the castle. The knowledge surged through him and he cradled the body almost lovingly as he drank the heart to silence.

Then he was rolling off it, drunk and disoriented, every nerve sizzling like a match end on bare flesh. He landed in the water, which shocked him to his feet. Harris was crouched against the rock, staring up at him with wide eyes.

"You—" He staggered through the water and dropped to his knees beside Harris, reaching out to pull the collar of his shirt aside. The club was on the ground beside the corpse; it was heavy wood, with a knot in the end. There was a purple welt on Harris's shoulder, another one on the side of his neck. "You okay?"

Harris said nothing. He was breathing badly again, hard and fast, his hands locked into the rock behind him. Staring at the corpse. Shock. Woozily, Spike pushed Harris's head to the other side, and saw more welts. There was blood on his skin—no, that was from Spike's own hands. He realized he was covered in blood. Then he realized he was still in game face.

It took a few seconds of effort to make the fangs retreat, which gave him a dim, faint shadow of a thought. Didn't they usually disappear the moment he wanted them to? It didn't matter. Harris was hurt. They had to get to the little oasis, to the pile of wood that Spike could make into a fire. He had to make sure Harris was all right, that was all that mattered.

"Here." He stood up and pulled Harris to his feet, then had a strange, black moment where he couldn't feel his feet. When he came to, Harris was struggling to hold them both up, his hands grappling with Spike's shoulders.

"Spike--?" He sounded scared, half suffocated.

"I'm okay." He was. He could see again, he knew where he was. It was a blip, that was all. How long had it been since he'd felt that, the dizzy sensation of standing up too fast? Not since he'd died. "Come on, let's go."

"Where are we going?" Harris allowed himself to be half-carried, half-dragged. It wasn't far. They just had to get there, and then Harris could sleep and Spike could stay awake and watch. It wasn't a perfect world if it kept attacking Harris. It wasn't a perfect world if Harris got hurt. If Harris got hurt, Spike was going to kill everything in sight, and burn the desert to glass.

 

 

At the oasis, Spike lowered Harris to the ground by the stream and watched him find the water with his hands. He watched Harris drink and wash his face, then remembered the fire. It was cold, he had to make a fire. His own hands were shaking, and the Zippo didn't strike until the third try. Then it caught, and the flames leapt up red and purple, and he leaned back onto his heels and let his eyelids fall halfway. His body was thrumming, loose and warm.

"Spike?"

He fell back, startled, onto his ass in the sand. Harris was standing beside him, the fire lighting the side of his face. There was a bruise along his cheek, another one starting just under the collar of his shirt. He looked gaunt and exhausted and worried.

"What?" Spike gathered himself, blinking. Had he been asleep? How long had Harris been standing there? "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. You just—" Harris glanced at Spike's chest, then back to his face. "Spike, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He got up and looked around, brushing sand off his ass. "Where's my shirt?"

Harris pulled it out of his jacket pocket, a damp, rumpled mess. Spike took it and shrugged it on. It smelled like Harris. That gave him a momentary warmth, and he remembered the club coming down, Harris scrambling to get away. He was pissed again. Exhausted, but pissed.

Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he walked to the stream and washed the dried blood off as much of himself as he could reach. Behind him, Harris sat quietly beside the fire. Again, Spike saw the club coming down. Something occurred to him.

"That fucker hit you in the face?"

He looked back over his shoulder, and saw Harris touch his cheekbone briefly. "Yeah."

"Which side?"

Momentary puzzlement, then understanding. "The bad one. It's okay. I can see okay."

That was pure luck. If it had hit him in the good eye, he'd have been blinded. A new sense of Harris's vulnerability swamped him, and he crouched in the darkness beside the stream, staring at nothing. Christ, Harris hadn't eaten in two days. He needed food. What the hell was he going to eat here? Roast monkey?

Spike groaned and wiped his face, then stood up when he realized Harris was walking toward him.

"Spike." His breathing sounded better again, thank God. "Come get warm, okay?"

Spike sniffed and wiped water off his nose. "Yeah. Okay." He was just tired, that was all. He wasn't thinking straight. He just needed a minute to sit still and recuperate, get his wind back. There was going to be another portal soon, and then they'd be back home, and everything would be fine.

Harris led him back to the fire, then sat down next to him and gave him a cracked half-smile. "I'm officially voting this Suckiest Alternate Universe Ever." His good eye was exhausted and bloodshot.

"Not so bad." Spike felt for his cigarettes, pulled them out, and found one miraculously unbroken. "Could have been one of those worlds without shrimp."

"The horror."

They sat a couple of minutes in silence, watching the fire burn. Spike offered Harris the cigarette, and for the first time ever, he took it. It made him cough until his eyes watered. Spike took it back without comment.

When he'd finally got his breath back, Harris gasped, "Was that…a person?"

"Looked like a monkey to me."

"It was yelling at me. I think it was mad."

"Yeah?" Spike took a long, hard drag. "Well now it's dead."

Harris was looking at him strangely, he realized. He frowned. "It was fucking hitting you, or didn't you notice?"

"Yeah." Harris shifted uncomfortably, and Spike remembered the blows to his legs. "I know. But Spike…"

There was silence for a minute. Spike flicked the cigarette end into the fire.

"Do you think, maybe, that there's something kind of…different about you?" Harris's voice was tentative, careful, as if he thought Spike might turn and backhand him without warning.

"Different how?"

"Well, you're kind of..." Harris swallowed. "You seem a little more intense, is all."

Spike frowned at his feet. "Things keep trying to bite your head off, Harris. You want me to be fine with that?"

"No. And listen, I haven't said thank you yet for half of what I have to say thank you for. I already owe you my firstborn child, I know that. I'd be totally and completely dead right now if you hadn't done what you did."

Spike pursed his lips, staring at the dust on his boots. He had a strange, warm feeling in his belly and thighs. What Harris was saying felt good. It felt right. He wanted…he didn't know what he wanted. Something that didn't make any sense.

"But—" Harris said, and stopped again. He seemed not to know what to say next.

"But what?"

"You're kind of freaking me out," Harris said quietly.

"You're an idiot," Spike said, and got up to go back and fetch the monkey-thing's club. If he was going to go off looking for some kind of food, he wanted Harris to be able to defend himself.

 

He'd been afraid the desert would have nothing more in it than tigers and monkey-faced assholes with clubs, but he'd been wrong. It had soft little prey animals that came out under cover of night, creeping out to drink from the rivulets coming off the cliff face. He didn't bother with game face for them—or maybe he didn't want to switch for other reasons. _You seem a little intense,_ Harris had said. Maybe he was right. Even in human face, Spike felt like he could smell things more sharply, see things more clearly. He moved faster, with less effort. He was more perfect here than he was in the real world, he realized. More perfect, or more like the demon. And maybe he didn't want to know too much more about what that really meant.

He caught a couple of little bucktoothed critters, snapped their necks, and carried them back to the oasis. Harris was asleep beside the fire, the club in his outstretched hand. Good thing—gutting without a knife was messy. Spike tossed the extra bits in the fire and speared the meat for roasting. Then he squatted down, his arms hanging between his knees, and sank into a kind of daze. The flames rose and fell.

He was running over the wide red plain, his feet striking up puffs of dust from the ground. His legs were long, pure muscle eating the ground. His belly was a cup. He could see for miles, he could smell every movement of water under the ground, of herds of deer in the distance. He was going somewhere, following something. Faint disturbances in the red dust, faint eddies of scent in the wind. Something big, something bloodied. There was blood in his mouth and on his hands. Soon he started to find drops of blood in the dust as well. He was getting close.

He was at the base of a cliff, and the tiger was above him, scrambling up the rocks with its tail lashing. Trying to get away. Its blood slicked the rocks, its paws scrabbled for purchase. He leapt up after it and grabbed it around the waist, bringing them both down together. They hit the ground with the tiger on top, two tons of fighting muscle. It lashed like a whip and he braced his heels in the dirt, arched, and snapped its back. While its heart still beat, he punched into its neck and drank.

He was in darkness, naked, moving with another body. His mouth on another mouth. Hands on his back, pulling him in, warm breath. He was inside, and clutching for more. He could smell familiar skin, familiar blood. He was stronger, he was stronger than anything and anyone, and he had to be careful, to hold some of his strength in reserve so he wouldn't cause damage, but that only made it better. The gasping breath got faster, uneven, and he knew he was giving pleasure. It made him feel like trapped light, like a coal in the darkness. He made safety and pleasure and life. He felt warm skin under his hands, against his belly, a trickle of sweat between them. With his eyes closed, his hands latched tight around the body beneath him, he gave up what he had.

He was floating in darkness. Interlaced with another set of arms and legs, another warm exhausted body. Sleeping breath touched his face. He'd never felt it, this deep quiet peace. This knowledge that everything was all right. No need to worry, or even to think. He never wanted to stop feeling it. Never wanted to leave.

 

 

"Spike."

Someone was shaking him by the shoulder. He stood up abruptly, staring around. Harris was on the ground by his feet, bowled over and blinking. The bruise on his face had swollen. It was starting to get light, and the fire was almost dead.

"Jesus Christ." Harris got to his feet and took a step away. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. What's wrong?"

Harris wiped his palms together slowly, eyeing Spike as if he'd been taken over by aliens. "You were just sitting there. Squatting there." He paused. "Staring."

"I was asleep." Spike leaned over and grabbed a couple of branches from the pile to chuck into the fire. "I'm not allowed to sleep, now?"

"Sleeping we do with our eyes closed, Spike. You were staring."

Spike dropped the wood onto the fire, and it crackled up immediately. The meat was roasted on its little sticks, probably dry now but still edible. "I was asleep, that's all."

"Well…" Harris looked doubtful, as if he wanted to pursue the issue but didn't quite dare. "Also, you're kind of—"

Spike stared at him.

"Bumpy," Harris said, gesturing at his own face.

Startled, Spike felt his forehead. The ridges were there, hard and prominent. He hadn't even noticed. With an effort, he suppressed them. Harris looked relieved.

"You should eat some of that," Spike said brusquely, tapping the roasted meat with the end of a branch. "Haven't eaten in a while, have you?"

Harris looked at the meat as if he hadn't even noticed it yet. "Oh my God," he said. "You got food?"

"Went shopping." Spike turned away, but the tone in Harris's voice—awed, grateful, amazed—was doing something strange to his chest. It felt warm and tight, too big. He walked to the water and pulled his shirt off, washed off a little better than he'd done before. There was dried monkey blood under his fingernails, and under his arms. And strangely, he was hungry again.

Harris ate the meat with happy, ravenous sounds, and Spike washed without looking at him, watching the sun come up over the far flat plain. He'd been dreaming strange things. Strange, but good. He felt strong, inexhaustible, like he could start running in any direction and kill anything he found. At the same time, the little domestic noises from behind him made him feel tender. Like he hadn't felt since Dru left.

He watched the last of the monkey blood disappear into the clear stream, and felt the sun start to dry the back of his neck.

 

 

 

Midday, they lay side by side in the shade of the cliff and watched the heat waver over the plain.

"You're sure we shouldn't go back?" Harris sounded hesitant, preoccupied. He was in pain, the bruises swollen all over his neck and shoulders, but he wanted to try for the spot where they'd come through. "I thought the idea was, when you get lost, you stay put."

"We're not lost."

"We're lost, Spike. We're uber-lost. We're in the Land of the Lost." Harris gave a quick glance around and rubbed his cheek gently. "I'm expecting Sleestacks any minute."

"You're breathing better." He sounded almost normal, although he still seemed exhausted.

"Yeah." He took a deep breath in, then let it out. "I guess it's like altitude. You get used to it."

"That's good."

There was a pause, then Harris said, "Yeah."

Way out in the middle of nowhere, something moved across the plain in a large herd. There were thousands of them, whatever they were. Spike could smell the faintest hint of cud and dung. It smelled familiar.

"It's okay," he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the movements of the deer, or whatever they were. "We're safe here."

Harris didn't say anything to that, and Spike didn't elaborate. He didn't see any point in trying to explain the deep sense of comfort he felt in his belly. It wasn't something he could find the words for, and he had a vague intuition that it wasn't something Harris could understand anyway.

 

 

Harris fell asleep eventually, stretched out flat on his back with his arms behind his head, his mouth open because he still had to pull at the air a little. Spike made sure the club was lying close to his hand, where he could grab it if he needed to. Then he pulled his shirt off and toed out of his boots, studying the horizon. He considered getting rid of the jeans, too, but something in him drew a line at that. He set out at an easy dogtrot, feeling the hot dust puff up beneath his feet.

It was half an hour before he smelled a trace, and then he veered for it immediately, picking up his pace. The prints were broad and circular, moving at a lope. He followed them down a long, gradual slope toward the smell of deer and grass.

The deer were in a valley with a shallow muddy river at the bottom, thousands of them trampling their pointy hooves into the silt. The tiger was crouched on a shelf of rock above them, flat against the dusty stone, its tail twitching softly at the tip. It was bigger than the last one, twelve or fourteen feet. Something in the base of Spike's brain lit up, sending an electric charge down his spine and out to his fingers and toes, to every part of him. He grinned, feeling his face split. The tiger's head turned suddenly, and they looked at each other. The tiger kept silent, its ears flat against its skull. Spike growled.

It slid off the rock before he could reach it, and was halfway down the slope to the river before he caught up. It ran at a full-out sprint, its lanky back legs overtaking its ears. The deer ran squalling, thunderous in the water. Spike caught the cat's back foot and they both skidded downhill in a plume of dust, entangled and snarling.

They hit the water and then it started in earnest. The cat was heavy, heavier than Spike had anticipated. It bore him down and he was blinded by the water, mud in his eyes. He could feel its fur against his mouth, and he bit instinctively. Nothing—all he had was slack skin. He kicked and flipped, feeling his spine give more than he'd known it could, and suddenly he was in the air, on top, the cat hissing putrid breath in his face, its tongue bright pink and curled like an oyster.

He punched it in the head, and when it flinched back he held its front legs open and buried his face in its throat. They went under again, both of them. This time he was deep in its artery, swallowing blood and mud, feeling its legs clutch at him. He was swept with the beautiful knowledge that he was killing it, that he could kill something this enormous and powerful. Its blood passed into him, and he swallowed it greedily, gratefully, like Harris eating the little scraps of meat off the sticks by the fire.

 

 

He made it back to the cliff face a couple of hours later, caked with dried mud and blood. Harris was awake, sitting against the rock with his knees drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. He watched Spike walk up without comment. Watched him rinse off in the stream, then pull his boots and shirt back on. When Spike walked over to sit next to him, though, his hand closed around the club and he pulled it a little closer.

Spike hesitated, frowning. "What?"

Harris dropped his eyes. "Nothing."

As an afterthought, Spike felt his own face. No ridges. He'd made a special effort to be sure about that. Didn't want Harris thinking he was getting out of control.

He sat down next to Harris, a little further away than he'd been going to. The club lay between them, Harris's hand flexing around it nervously. Spike looked down at it, then at Harris's face.

"You going to hit me with that?"

Harris cleared his throat, swallowed, and shook his head. Spike looked away across the plain. The herd of whatever had moved away. Nothing out there now but red dust and heat.

"Spike?"

"Yeah?"

There was a long pause. Spike watched a few pinkish clouds move past, way up high. Finally, he looked at Harris, who was watching him with a strange expression. Like fear.

"What?"

Harris shook his head, dropped the club, and gave a shaky little laugh. "Nothing." When he wiped his palm on his trouser leg, it left a wet mark behind.

 

 

 

He must have fallen asleep again, but this time it was just nothing, a black hole he didn't even remember dropping into. He woke up lying in the dirt, his face turned up to the sky. Alone. Harris was nowhere to be seen.

If he'd had a working heart, it would have kicked up. As it was, he sat up with a snap, like a jack-in-the-box released. The stream trickled by, sublime and indifferent. The club was gone, Harris was gone. It was almost dark. For a few seconds Spike cast about in a kind of frenzied confusion. Something had attacked them while he'd been asleep. Harris had been killed, taken—

Then he saw the tracks leading out into the desert, one clear and the other dragging a little, because Harris was still limping from the club landing on his legs. They were short, hurried steps. He was using the club as a cane, by the look of it. Heading out alone into the darkness, into the middle of nowhere.

With a snarl of fear and anger, Spike started to run. How long had he been asleep? How far had Harris gone?

It was cold again, and there was no moon. Maybe there was never any moon in this reality. It didn't matter, he could see the tracks plainly enough, and he could even smell Harris himself, out there in the darkness. Smell his blood and his fear, the finely dispersed molecules of his breath in the air. He wasn't far, he couldn't have got far. Still, Spike ran faster.

He caught up after an eternity, maybe a little less than an hour. Harris was near exhaustion, breathing so hard and raggedly that Spike could hear him five hundred yards away. He smelled like injured prey, dragging itself across the bare face of the desert at night. Spike wanted to grab him, cover him, make him invisible to everything out here that would eat him if it got half a chance.

He was running softly and he didn't call out, so by the time Harris noticed him they were almost close enough to touch. Harris spun around and swung the club, desperate and awkward. He couldn't see, Spike remembered. Couldn't see, couldn't smell, was half-frozen and practically suffocating. The club went wide, and he grabbed the end so Harris couldn't try again.

"Fuck—" Harris yanked at his end, then let go abruptly and staggered back.

"It's okay," Spike said gently. "It's me."

That didn't seem to reassure Harris at all. Maybe he had sunstroke, Spike thought, stepping closer and getting a hand under Harris's arm. Harris gave an involuntary gasp and tried to pull away.

"It's _okay,_ " Spike said again. "Harris, it's me. Spike."

"Let go." Harris tried to get his arm free again, but Spike held on. "Fuck off, Spike. Let me go." His voice was raw and high.

"Let you—?" Spike tightened his grip. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing." Harris laughed, a little hysterically. "I'm fine, Spike. Just let me go, okay?"

Spike said nothing, and didn't let go.

"Please?" Harris voice cracked, and he tugged experimentally at his arm. Spike let go and Harris stumbled back, massaging his bicep. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Harris was shivering, he noticed. "You're freezing. What the hell are you playing at, running away like that?"

"I don't know." Harris coughed, dry and painful-sounding. "I just…I thought maybe the portal—"

"I told you," Spike said patiently. "It won't be there."

"I know. I know you said that."

"So what are you—"

"Spike." Harris wiped his mouth and took a deep breath. "Jesus, I'm going to die here, aren't I?"

"What?" Spike took a step closer, involuntarily. Harris stepped back. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I'm saying…" Harris trailed off. "I don't know what I'm saying. I'm cold."

"That's why I made a fire."

Harris said nothing. He was studying the ground, as if he were trying to see something. Looking for the club, Spike realized after a moment. He held it out, so it brushed Harris's hand. "Here."

Harris jumped, but took the club. It seemed to make him feel a little better to clutch it in both hands. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They stood there for another few seconds of silence, Harris holding the club tightly, Spike wondering what to say next. Finally Harris opened his mouth, his eyes on the ground.

"Spike."

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Depends." That got him another pause, so he said, "Yeah, okay. What?"

Harris rubbed his lips again, took hold of the club in both hands, and said, "Are you going to kill me?"

Spike just stood there, his mouth open.

"I'm just asking," Harris said. "I mean, I understand it's kind of a stupid thing to ask, because if you were going to kill me, why would you tell me first? You'd just kill me. Except maybe you would tell me, because when you think about it, what the hell am I going to do to stop you?"

Spike held up his hand, palm-out. Then he remembered that Harris couldn't see. "I'm not going to kill you," he said.

"Yet," Harris supplied. "Not yet, right? You're waiting for the right moment."

"I'm not going to kill you," Spike repeated. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about you being really fucking scary the last couple of days, Spike."

"What—I'm not scary." He was, and he knew it, but his mind felt at war with itself. Something about what Harris was saying felt true, but a greater part of him felt drastically misunderstood, even wronged. "I'm not going to hurt you. I've been _saving your life._ "

Harris swallowed, but didn't release his hold on the club. "I know. You get my firstborn, remember? I'm very grateful for all that you've done, but I'm also a little worried that you're going kind of Son of Sam on me, and right now I'm not really sure that you know what you're doing."

"I know what I'm doing."

"You go running around half-naked in the desert and come back covered in blood. Is this some drum circle thing I'm not invited to?"

"I have to eat, Harris. We can't all get by on roast chipmunk, all right?"

Harris blinked, then closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped. He rested the end of the club on the ground, and leaned his weight on it.

"You all right?" Spike asked, wanting to reach out but afraid to make it worse. Harris opened his eyes.

"Yeah. I'm just…maybe it's me. Maybe I'm going nuts."

"You're not nuts, you're just…" Spike watched Harris shiver for a few seconds, then thought _fuck it_. "Come here." He didn't wait for compliance, just reached out and chafed Harris's shoulders with his palms. "You're just cold."

Harris flinched slightly at his touch, but didn't try to move away. His eyes searched the darkness earnestly. "You still have the soul, right?"

"It doesn't come and go, Harris."

"Right. And yes, I know, another stupid question."

"Don't be scared," Spike said, and then wanted to say more, but couldn't think what, exactly, to add. Harris's arms were cold and trembling under his hands. Without thinking about it, he yielded to the impulse he'd been fighting for hours. Days, maybe. He pulled Harris in and held him close, feeling the shaky warmth of his body, smelling his skin. They stood like that for a few seconds in silence.

"Spike?" Harris said at last, over Spike's shoulder.

"Mm?"

"You're…hugging me."

A small part of Spike's brain thought, _You're right, I am. What the fuck is that about?_ The rest of him didn't think at all. He raised his palm to Harris's cheek, turned his head, and kissed him on the mouth. Harris tasted like woodsmoke and meat, like dust, like himself. His lips were dry and split. Spike licked them gently.

"Spike?"

His hands in Harris's hair, his hips riding forward on their own business, Spike hummed a reply. Harris swallowed. His throat clicked.

"I think…I think you're maybe not okay right now."

Spike pulled back. In the faint light of the foreign stars, Harris's eyes were wide and black, wet at the edges. His hands were still on the club, flexing tightly. Spike frowned. "What's wrong?"

For a moment Harris searched blindly for his face, his lips opening and then closing again. He seemed to think of several replies, and then discard them one by one. Finally he cleared his throat and said, "Do you promise not to kill me?"

Spike smiled, rubbing his thumb over the bone behind Harris's ear. "God, you're a wanker. I don't kill people I love."

That seemed to hit Harris somewhere just around the solar plexus. He let out a soft breath and swayed slightly on his feet.

"You taste good," Spike said, and kissed him again. This time Harris's mouth felt less amazed. He opened his lips slightly, and after a little while he even kissed back. His hands stayed put, though. His heart was beating fast, and he smelled like fear. Spike tried to kiss it out of him, and after a while it seemed to drain away. Finally Spike realized that Harris was hardly moving, hardly responding. Exhausted.

"Let's go back," Spike said, slipping a hand under Harris's arm. He felt delighted, exuberant, ready to run all the way back to the cliffs. Ready to go wherever he had to, do whatever he had to. It was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.

 

This time he found them a small cave not far from the oasis, dry and warm from the sun-heated rock. There were little animals—mice, or something like mice—but that didn't matter. He lit a fire at the mouth and Harris lay slumped against the wall of rock, staring around with a kind of dull amazement.

"Home sweet home," he said faintly, and laughed.

He seemed to expect something from Spike—his eyes were black and weary, following Spike everywhere he went. Spike smiled back a couple of times, trying to put him at ease. It didn't work. Finally, unnerved himself, Spike built up the fire and went out shopping for Harris's dinner. A few more of the toothy, fine-boned little animals, which he strung on a stick through their hind legs. This time Harris watched him do the gutting, without commenting or offering to help. When the meat was cooked through Spike brought it to him, hoping that would help smooth things over between them. Food was elemental, wasn't it? You couldn't hold a grudge against a man who fed you when you were hungry.

And Harris was hungry. His stomach made low snarling sounds, and he ate the meat fast, so fast that Spike held the second stick back.

"Slow down a bit. You'll get sick."

Licking grease from his fingers, Harris sat back against the cave wall. Again, he looked around and chuckled without much humor.

"I have to admit," he said. "You know how to treat a guy right."

"It's not much," Spike said, playing along, glad just to be talking again. "But the cleaner's on holiday."

Harris gave him a sharp look, a hopeful look, and Spike tried a bit of the meat. It was good. And he was hungry again, somehow.

Harris reached for the meat, and Spike automatically handed over the bit he was holding. Harris hesitated, then took the scrap from his fingers. He put it in his mouth and chewed, his eyes closed. "What is this, anyway?"

Spike shrugged, separating another bit from the stick. "Looked like a rabbit, sort of."

"Mmm, sort-of rabbit."

Spike smiled and held out another piece. Harris took it. They went on like that for a while, Spike rationing the meat so Harris wouldn't eat too fast. That was what he told himself, at least. He was just making sure Harris didn't get sick. It didn't have anything to do with the feeling of their fingers meeting. It had nothing to do with how it felt to feed Harris, literally feed him, one piece at a time.

The meat was practically gone, and Harris's eyelids were dropping. Spike tore the last shreds off and held them, without thinking, to Harris's mouth. That seemed to startle him, and he sat up a little straighter, his eyes alert again. Spike brushed the meat against his lower lip and he opened his mouth automatically. Like a baby bird, taking what was offered.

"Go to sleep." Spike wiped his hand off on his jeans, briskly and without comment. Harris's eyes, glassy and dark, stayed on him. "I'll take care of the dishes."

Harris closed his eyes without smiling at that one, and Spike got up, walked to the fire, and dropped the stick and skeletons into it. Then he went out into the night, walked a good hundred feet from the mouth of the cave, opened his jeans, and jerked off. The orgasm was waiting right there for him. It pulled him forward a step and knocked breath into his lungs. When he stopped seeing stars he zipped up, scuffed sand over the mess on the ground, and stared for a minute or two out into the darkness of the plain. Then he went back into the cave, stoked the fire, and sat down beside it to keep watch.

 

 

Harris slept long, maybe because the cave was dark, maybe because he was exhausted. Maybe because he was trying to avoid waking up. Spike wasn't tired at all, but he was hungry. A few hours after the sun appeared, he laid the club down beside Harris's sleeping body and went out running. Back to the valley with the river in the bottom, where he'd seen the deer the day before. They were there again, skirting the stiff, waterlogged corpse of the tiger he'd killed. No more tigers, but he ran down a couple of deer and drank them instead. They weren't anywhere near as satisfying.

It wasn't such a bad world, he mused, his heels striking dust from the ground on the way back. There was enough food for now, and if they ranged a little farther they'd probably find more. One of those deer would last Harris a while, and there had to be some kind of fruit or grass or something he could eat as well. Humans needed that kind of thing, didn't they? Maybe they could find more of those monkey things, and see what they ate. There was food, there was water, the air was getting better for Harris and the sun didn't burn Spike to a crisp. It was a world where he was top of the food chain, too. That didn't hurt matters any.

Maybe the portal hadn't been such a bad thing after all. Maybe it had just been a kind of…opportunity.

He got back to find Harris naked in the stream, washing up. It clobbered him harder than anything this red world had thrown at him so far. Blindsided him, in fact. His feet stuttered to a stop, and he just stood where he was, twenty feet off and staring.

He'd never been much for blokes, never really listened while Angelus rhapsodized over the white-skinned church-going boys he'd shagged and killed. Always thought it was sort of an affectation, just Angelus making a point of blowing through one more convention. And even Harris, even here—up till now, he hadn't felt lust for Harris's body. What he'd felt had been something different—an intense need to protect. A baffling urge for intimacy, for proximity. He'd liked the touch of Harris's skin on his own, but it hadn't had anything to do with his dick. Or maybe it had, but not in the usual way. Not in the way he thought of women, who made more sense where dicks were concerned.

So it was strange, almost frightening, to find himself pegged stock-still by lust like this. By the sight of Harris's body. Bruised and sunburnt and scoop-bellied, with broad shoulders and square hips and big-muscled thighs. With hair on his chest, and his forearms, and his legs. With a cock, like a plum hanging down between his legs. The sight of that, of Harris's complete, unselfconscious nakedness, made Spike's mouth go dry. He wanted that body, wanted to take it in his hands and open it like a fruit, tease out its sweetness and soft hollow places. He wanted to fuck Harris. Hard. A lot.

Harris crouched stiffly, the bones of his spine standing out under the skin, and cupped water to sluice over his head. His hair shone black in the sunshine. He snorted, blew water out his nose, and reached carefully for the rock to steady himself while he cupped more water to run over his neck and back. Spike hesitated a moment longer, then twisted his courage to the sticking point and walked through the bushes to the edge of the water. Harris froze, his free hand moving instinctively to his groin, then away when he realized it.

"Spike. You're…back."

"Yeah." He was covered in deer blood, and more mud from the river. He felt like an animal. "I'll wait till you're done."

Harris opened his mouth but didn't offer to share. After a second he said, "I'll be…I'm almost out."

"Better put your shirt on," Spike said, turning away and going to check on the fire. "You're getting burnt."

 

 

 

Spike washed later, alone, while Harris sat in the shade breaking big sticks into little ones. Naked, Spike wondered briefly whether Harris looked at him at all. Whether Harris felt anything like the same. _The same as what?_ a part of his brain asked wearily. Every so often he felt these flickers, like his own voice talking in his ear. Asking him what the hell he thought he was doing. Asking him if he'd really kissed Harris last night, if he'd really gone looking for tigers to rip into little pieces, if he was really walking around in the sunshine. He didn't have answers to those kinds of questions. Or he did, but there was no point in giving them.

The water felt good, cold and sharp, and after he was clean he stayed in a while, just soaking with his head underwater. The world above looked blurry and purple, not even real. After a while Harris appeared at the edge of the stream, just as blurry but more real. Spike broke the surface in a hurry.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Harris's face was disturbed. "You just…you've been underwater for ten minutes."

"I don't breathe."

"I know." The troubled frown didn't go away. "It's just…weird."

Spike considered, then shrugged and stood up. Harris dropped his eyes and turned away. So that was an answer, of sorts, to the question of whether Harris looked. Harris preferred not to, apparently.

Feeling strangely crestfallen, Spike collected his clothes from the dry bank and skinned them on. It was hell getting into the jeans before his legs were dry.

Harris had spent the time making neat piles of firewood from small bits to large ones. None of the piles was very big, Spike noticed. He needed to get more.

Harris was standing at the mouth of the cave, shading his eyes with his hand, staring out into the plain. Spike turned to look at whatever he was staring at. Just more herds of deer, covering the plain in the remotest distance like a colony of ants. He turned back.

"I'll get one of those for you, next time I'm out. Should have got one today, but—"

"They're doing something weird." Harris was frowning, squinting hard. "It's like they're…I don't know, stampeding or something."

Spike looked again. It took a minute to see it from this distance, but yeah, Harris was right. They were running from something, in huge movements of thousands at a go, first one direction and then another. Or maybe that was just what they did.

"Maybe," he said. "Doesn't matter anyway, they're a hundred miles off."

"Maybe they're scared." Harris lowered his head and pressed tears from his good eye, blinking hard. "Fuck. Ow. Maybe…a portal could spook them, right?"

Spike turned back and looked again. He didn't see anything different, just masses of dark movement, right, then left. Forward and back. Too far away to hear the hoofbeats, even. "It could. I don't see anything, though. Probably just one of those cats."

"Or something else." Harris chewed his lip and rubbed his hand over the beard starting on his jaw. It made a soft sound, an intimate bristling sound, that made Spike's palms prickle. "Could be something else out there besides kitties."

"Don't worry about it," Spike said shortly. "Whatever's out there isn't getting through me."

It seemed like Harris gave him a strange look at that, halfway between gratitude and fear. He ignored it, and went off to pick up more firewood.

 

 

They had visitors at the stream that night. A litter of some kind of little red foxlike animals, the mother as long as Spike's forearm and the kits as long as his hand. Maybe it had taken them that long to brave the fire, or maybe they were just passing through. They tumbled over each other on the stream bank, squeaking and snuffling, while Harris gnawed the flesh off a rabbitish bone and Spike watched carefully, just in case.

"Relax. They're cute." Harris finished the bone he was working on and tossed it gently across the stream, into the grasses. Two of the kits pounced on it, and there was a brief growling match.

"They're irritating." Actually, they were cute, but he didn’t like the thought of the local wildlife getting too comfortable. He picked up a rock and drew his arm back to skim it at them. Harris grabbed his hand.

"Jesus, Spike. Take it easy."

"You don't even know what they are." He sounded weak and defensive even to his own ears. Harris fished a bone out of his molars and flicked it into the dust.

"They're foxes," he said. "More or less. If they turn out to be Gremlins, I take full responsibility for feeding them just now."

"Right, and when they come back and start eating your feet while you're asleep, I'll just stroke them gently, shall I?"

Harris made a _pfffft_ sound and sank back against the rock. The sun was going down, and everything was bathed in a coppery glow. The fox kits tumbled. Slowly, Spike sat down again.

"There you go," Harris said, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Just like watching _Mutual of Omaha_."

After a while the foxes left and the sun went down. Staring into the fire on his side of the cave, Harris said quietly, "I wonder what Buffy and Willow are doing right now."

For just a second, Spike couldn't remember who Buffy and Willow were.

 

 

 

He was running across the desert again, his legs long and hard, carrying him tirelessly. Naked, the sun heavy on his shoulders and the crown of his head. He had almost no shadow. He felt strong, elated, prepared.

The smell in the air was different this time. Not the rank smell of cat, or the blunted, hapless smell of the deer. Something darker and stronger. It smelled of the blood of things it had killed, and it smelled massive. He felt the hairs on his arms and neck rise, felt his fangs draw out of his gums, felt his cock half-rise. It wasn't far now.

He was pressed against a rock, a huge weight crushing him, his own blood welling up in his throat. It was on top of him, holding him down, tearing into him. He felt his ribcage fold with a single snap, like the stem of a wineglass stepped on. He was bleeding out of himself at both ends, everywhere he had an opening. His fangs sank uselessly into dark oily flesh. He couldn't move. It was staring into his face, its eye huge and golden, flecked with brown. He couldn't look away. It tipped its head, taking his throat at a better angle. Then it tore his head off.

 

 

"Spike." Harris was there, holding his shoulder, staring into his face. "Spike, come on. Wake up."

He turned his head, tried to stand up, and immediately fell over. Harris caught him and they both went down onto the stone. His legs had cramped. He was covered in sweat, and shivering. Something was wrong.

"Where—" He pushed halfway up, to his knees, and looked around. It was night, the fire was still going. "What happened?"

"You were having a nightmare." Harris was still on his back, hands up defensively, staring at him. "Sort of. You were staring again."

"I was asleep." He remembered all of it, beginning to end. It made bile rise in his throat. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he didn't feel strong. He felt weak and vulnerable and frightened.

"Spike?" Harris was getting up, coming toward him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He didn't want Harris near him, didn't want Harris to see him scared like this. He got to his feet and walked out past the fire, into the darkness. Outside, he took a few long deep breaths, testing the air. He smelled dust and woodsmoke and distant cud, water and Harris and little animals in the grass. Nothing else. No tigers. No massive, putrid giant with golden eyes. Except maybe…

He stood still for five minutes, trying to decide whether there was a current of something out there. His imagination was running away with him, that was all. He was tired, getting paranoid.

When he turned back, Harris was leaning against the mouth of the cave, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked bleak and baffled. Spike came back into the firelight and shook his head.

"Sorry. Just a bad dream."

"Your eyes were open. Again."

"Don't worry about it. It's okay, we're safe."

"You keep saying that." Harris tipped his head with a humorless half-smile. "It's exactly that kind of reassurance that makes me think we're doomed."

"We're not doomed." He was tired, and his shirt was sticking to his skin. He plucked at it and came back into the cave, let his legs fold and lay back on the stone. "Wish we had a proper bed, though."

"It's good for the posture." Harris sank down next to him, but sat upright, feeding twigs into the fire. Spike watched him through half-lidded eyes. The little flames leapt up and died down.

"Spike."

He was almost asleep; he opened his eyes and said, "Yeah?" Hoping it wasn't an emergency.

"You think we're really going to get back?"

Harris kept his eyes on the flames, as if they were an important project he was working on. Spike blinked slowly, feeling grit beneath his eyelids.

"I don't know," he said at last, because it was the only thing he could think of to say.

Harris nodded without surprise and kept feeding the fire.

Sometime much later, Spike woke up to find Harris curled up right next to him, practically around him. One of Harris's arms was thrown across Spike's chest. He was breathing steadily and deeply, his eyelids twitching.

Spike pressed his nose to the top of Harris's head, breathed in, and felt the dark snag of fear in his belly loosen a little bit.

When they woke up in the morning, Harris rolled away and went to take a piss without saying anything.

 

 

"Where did you get that?" Harris was staring at the deer like it was a hubcab, something completely bizarre and inexplicable. Spike smiled.

"There's a valley, a few miles off. Thousands of 'em in it." He dropped it in the dust and toed its belly. "Ought to keep you fed for a while."

"If the scurvy doesn't get me first." Harris crouched and studied the deer doubtfully. "So how does it go from this to burger?"

"You gut it," Spike said simply, plunging his arms into the stream up to the elbows. The cold water felt good. Running had felt good. Killing the deer had felt the best of all. "One thing about spending twenty years under Angelus's tender patronage, you learn how to gut."

Harris leaned back, swallowing hard, and Spike laughed.

"This," he said, "is going to get messy."

 

It got very messy. He did it naked so he'd still have clothes to wear afterward, and only washed off when it was finished. The skin was lying out four points to the compass, as neat as he could get it under the circumstances, the guts piled on top. There was plenty of meat, more than Harris could eat really, but there were also plenty more deer out there.

"That," Harris said, sitting slumped at the mouth of the cave while Spike rinsed off, "is the goriest thing I've ever seen. And I saw _Showgirls_."

Spike laughed, dousing himself. The dream, or whatever it had been, was completely gone now. The world was good again. He was the apex, the great white shark. The master of all he surveyed.

Harris ate a gory lunch of seared deer meat, burning his fingers on the blackened parts and grimacing at the ruby-red insides. Spike tried a bit himself, just to see. It was like eating a sponge that had been soaked in the real food, the blood. He frowned and held out the bit he was eating for Harris to take back.

"No good?"

He shrugged. Harris took the bite and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Tastes like chicken."

"No it doesn't."

"I know. I just had to say that."

Spike lay back in the dust and let his arm fall out, so that the backs of his fingers touched Harris's leg. Harris didn't move away or comment. He didn't even seem to notice. He just kept working on the meat until he'd finished everything he could, and then he set it aside with a low groan.

"And that was the deer that was." He licked his thumb, then grimaced. "Gross."

Spike rolled onto his side and studied Harris for a couple of moments, Long enough to let him know he was being studied, long enough to give him a chance to get up and walk away. He didn't.

So Spike reached out and pulled Harris's hand to his mouth. There was blood on his fingers, warm and salty. Spike licked it off, already reaching for Harris's other hand. Harris cleared his throat, but let Spike do it. Then they were sitting there with Harris's wrists in Spike's hands, Harris's fingers wet from Spike's mouth. Staring at each other.

"I guess you did buy me dinner," Harris said, and leaned down. His mouth was tentative, delicious. He was off-balance, so Spike pulled gently and guided him down onto the stone, still kissing. Warm breath in his mouth, a little quick, a little scared. A taste of blood, a tongue just barely touching his lips. The hesitancy was incredible, inflaming. It made Spike want to roll over on top of Harris and cover him, keep him safe and feed him, fuck him, own him completely. He kissed harder, bringing his hand up to Harris's jaw. Harris made a soft sound and parted his lips a little wider.

Gradually they interlocked, Spike's leg in between Harris's, Harris's hand up Spike's shirt, flat in the middle of his back. Harris was breathing fast now, his heart beating in his throat. Spike ducked his head and sucked Harris's fingers back into his mouth, tasting blood and sweat, teasing with his teeth.

"God, fuck—" When Spike opened his eyes, he saw Harris watching with amazement. "Jesus, Spike." The sound of his own name was riveting. He pushed his hips forward and felt Harris's hard-on, incontrovertible alongside his own. Harris made a little whining sound in his throat.

Smiling, Spike got Harris's belt undone, got his own jeans down, got both of them out. When he touched Harris's dick, Harris sucked in breath like he'd been burned. His pupils were gigantic, his expression stunned. Maybe he hadn't done this before. Not with another bloke, at least. Spike gave that about a second's worth of thought, then wrapped his fingers around Harris's dick and started to stroke. Harris's eyes snapped closed, and his mouth fell open as if on a hinge. His teeth were white against his sunburn. Spike leaned over and kissed him, tongue first, matching the movement of his hand.

Maybe Harris hadn't done this before, but Spike had. He knew where the edge was, what the telltale signs were, and he backed off before Harris went over it. Just before. Harris was gasping, sweating, staring at him wide-eyed like he'd invented something incredible. Spike smiled at him, then put the pads of his fingers against Harris's lips.

"What--?"

"Open up."

Harris opened up, his eyelids falling slightly as he sucked on Spike's fingers. It felt incredible, right in every way, the perfect prelude. Spike gave himself a moment to thrust hard against Harris's thigh, scraping himself over the fabric of Harris's trousers. Then he pulled his fingers out and pushed Harris onto his side. Harris opened his mouth to ask, but Spike was already running his wet hand down and around, into the cleft of Harris's ass. Harris's eyes widened, and he jerked.

"Hey—whoah—"

Spike stopped moving his hand, stopped thrusting. For a second they lay still and looked at each other. Harris was struggling to catch his breath, Spike noticed.

"You want to stop?"

"I just—" Harris licked his lips and glanced around, as if looking for assistance. "I'm just not sure this is such a great idea."

Spike ran a wet finger over Harris's asshole, and he jerked again. This time his dick jerked too.

"Don't have to do anything." It was true—if Harris wanted to stop, they'd stop. In his dream, the body beneath his had been willing and eager. That was what he wanted. To be strong, to be light, to bring pleasure. "Just this for a while, yeah?"

"Why—" Harris swallowed, as Spike's fingers moved over him. "Why are you doing this, exactly? I mean, Jesus. Fuck." He lowered his head and closed his eyes. "God, okay. That's—God."

Spike laughed quietly, and licked the fingers of his other hand.

They just did that for a while, Harris following along nervously at first, then losing himself bit by bit and starting to lead. He was a good kisser, an interesting kisser. He was a man, which meant he thought he had to lead, but really he liked to be led. When Spike bit his lip, his dick jerked. When Spike said, _I want to fuck you,_ his heart kicked over and his whole body flushed. Interesting.

"I don't—" He stopped. "I mean, I don't think that's—" He stopped again.

Spike let that go, and went back to kissing him. His whole body felt alive, attuned, singing like a wineglass. His dick felt leaden, leaking at the tip. He couldn't stop shoving it against Harris's warm skin, feeling the cat-tongue friction of it, the delicious burn. "I want to fuck you," he said again. "Please, yeah, let me—" His fingers found Harris's entrance and breached him, just slightly. "God, I want to be inside you."

Harris's breath sounded desperate, almost like sobs. He was on top now, naked except for his T-shirt, God knew where his trousers had gone. Spike was the opposite, shirtless but still in his jeans. He arched up, pressing his dick through Harris's legs, rubbing along his balls and thigh. Harris's face looked stunned, scared and entranced. His own dick was pointing due north, flat against his belly.

"Just for a minute," Spike went on, aware that he was begging but not able to stop. "Just a bit, just let me—" He reared up again, sliding frustratedly into air.

Harris said nothing, but when Spike's fingers entered him again he pressed down, his hands flexing on Spike's chest. The sound he made was strangled and thick. Inside, he felt silken. Tight and hot, like a fist. Spike moved his fingers and Harris arched, grabbing Spike's shoulders. His mouth opened and he hissed out a long breath, almost like a sigh.

"Yeah?" Spike used his other hand to jack Harris off, slowly and deliberately. Harris pressed up and back, his face lost, his throat pulsing. After a while, he reached down and felt blindly for Spike's dick.

"Not like this—" Spike nudged Harris's left knee, and got out from under when he lifted it up. Behind him, he took hold of Harris's waist and kissed the back of his neck. "Okay?"

Harris nodded, his shoulders tightening slightly. Spike bent him forward and knelt behind him, spat in his hand, then rubbed the dark line of Harris's ass, straight down and around. He was so warm, so fragile. Bent over like this, he had no way of defending himself. But it felt right, it felt exactly right, to cover his body and part him and start to press inside—

Harris gave a low moan, then a yelp, and then he was scrambling free, panting, his eyes wide and frightened. Spike fell back onto his heels, startled.

"You okay?"

Harris wiped his forearm over his mouth and said nothing. After a minute he let out a shaky laugh.

"Sorry. That was just…I don't think I'm ready for that."

Spike took that in, then nodded slowly. "Right. Sorry."

"It's okay." Harris scratched his ear, glanced down at his dick, and laughed again. "Obviously. I'm okay. I'm just—"

Spike waited.

"I think," Harris said, after a moment's thought, "I'm gonna hold out for jewelry on that one."

There was another pause. Spike reached for the zipper of his jeans, nodding again to show he understood. He felt strangely jolted and crushed, not just rejected but somehow frightened. This was supposed to go a certain way—he'd dreamed it like that. He'd just been following the dream, but it wasn't working, and now he didn’t know what to do.

"Hang on." Harris came back and knelt in front of him, his face earnest now. "Look, I have no idea how we got going with this, but since we did, we might as well finish it off right."

Spike smiled. "Gallant of you."

"Fuck gallant." Frustrated now, Harris kissed him hard, his hands on Spike's shoulder and jaw. The bristles of his beard scraped Spike's lips. When he pulled back, his eyes were lit up darkly, the pupils huge. "Here, look—"

Maybe he'd never done this before, but he seemed to have some pretty clear ideas about how it could work. He folded his legs beneath him, took hold of his own dick, and wrapped his free hand around the back of Spike's neck, bringing their heads close together. "Like this, yeah?"

Spike, ever the fast learner, took the hint and jerked himself off while Harris breathed hard into his mouth. Spike came first. He knelt there watching, floating almost, while Harris's hand moved and his eyes closed and he got that particular flush some people took on in their throat and cheeks. His spine arched, he said _God, fuck, baby_ \--and then it was all over. He was gasping for air, one hand catching his weight on the stone as he folded.

"You okay?" Spike put a hand on Harris's back, then took it away when he felt the damp heat coming through the shirt. He felt intrusive, somehow. Off kilter. Something hadn't been right, and he still had the little bud of fear in his belly. Little, but growing.

"Yeah." Harris picked himself up, wiped sweat off his upper lip, and tried to smile. "Straight guys do this all the time, right?"

Spike shrugged, zipped up his jeans, and found his shirt. Pulling it on, he noticed the fire was almost out. They still needed more wood. And he had to get rid of the deer guts.

Harris's trousers were lying in a heap near his shirt. He picked them up, shook them right-side-out, and handed them over.

"Thanks," Harris said quietly. Too quietly, but Spike's mind was on other things. The deer guts near the cave, that was a stupid thing to do. The meat—he should find a safe place to keep it. They should start keeping the fire lit all the time. Now when he stood in the clean air at the mouth of the cave, he was sure he could smell something big out there. He couldn't see it yet, but that didn't mean it hadn't seen them.

He thought of the huge yellow eye staring into his face, and went out to clear away the entrails.

 

 

The afternoon faded into evening, and he couldn't shake the weird strong sense of things being wrong. Of danger, of the dream eye watching them. This was what the humans felt, he thought, when they sensed they were being stalked from the rooftops. This was what made them go momentarily insane and run into dark alleys to escape. There was always a connection between the predator and the prey. He just wasn't used to being on the prey side of the equation.

It made him more and more angry and afraid, because he couldn't see anything on the plain and he couldn't smell anything definite on the wind. Harris had gone silent, probably taking Spike's mood as some kind of rebuke for bad sex. Spike wanted to say something to reassure him, but he couldn't sit still long enough to think up the words. He'd do it later, when the sense of threat was gone. When he couldn't smell the faint, dark suggestions on the breeze. When the hairs on the back of his neck lay down flat again.

He'd taken the deer guts far away and buried them, then put the rest of the meat in a pool downstream. He'd brought firewood back in stacks, while Harris sat watching without saying a word. Now he was standing out in front of the cave, smelling the wind while the sun went down. He'd been standing there for half an hour.

"Spike."

He turned; Harris was sitting at the edge of the cave, his chin on his hand. He looked strangely…glum. Not frightened, not on edge. Just tired and low. The bruise on his cheek had faded to green.

Spike walked back to the mouth of the cave and, after a moment's hesitation, sat down next to Harris. They didn’t say anything for a while.

Finally, Harris shifted and turned his head to look at Spike. "You don't have any more cigarettes, do you?"

Spike shook his head. They'd gone into the river when he'd tackled the second cat.

"Too bad." Harris went back to looking at the horizon. "So…don't take this the wrong way, but you kind of suck at afterglow."

"There's something out there." Spike poked a loose stick into the fire with his heel. "What you saw, before. With the deer."

Harris took a deep breath and looked out into the plain. It was dark now, Spike realized. Dark fell fast in the desert. "Strictly speaking, they're not deer."

"Whatever. You saw them running. There's something out there, and I think it's coming this way."

There was a pause while Harris considered that. Finally he ran his hands over his face and half-smiled. "Like I said, you could stand to work on your morning-after patter. Giant monster threats are more of a come-hither tactic for most people."

Spike scraped his heel through the dust and said nothing.

"You're the biggest bad out here," Harris said, sounding falsely hearty. "You've been eating sabre-tooth tigers for breakfast. You're scaring the shit out of _me_ , if that's any consolation."

"It's big," Spike said, scuffing out the marks he'd made with his boot. "I don't think…"

Harris waited. After a minute he reached out and drew the club to him, laying it across his knees.

"You don't think what?"

Spike shook his head. The fire popped and Harris jumped. It was stupid, what he was doing. Getting them both worked up over nothing, over a dream and the faintest thread of a smell.

"Doesn't matter," he said, getting up and clapping dust off his palms. "Doesn't matter what it is, there's no way it's getting through me."

"I'm right behind you," Harris said softly, with a kind of knee-jerk self-denigration. Spike dropped a few more sticks on the fire and lay down on the other side of the cave, where he could pretend to fall asleep.

 

 

Somehow he must have really dropped off, because when he opened his eyes the fire was low and there was a heavy smell in the air. It smelled thick and dry, totally foreign and somehow, at the same time, familiar. It made him think of dead leaves, piles of dead winter leaves and yellow London fog—the acrid eyeburn of it when the wind hadn't changed in weeks. It made him think, briefly, of Angelus. It was bigger than Angelus, though.

Harris was sitting against the other side of the cave, the club in both hands, his legs gathered in tight to his chest. His eyes were wide, staring out the mouth of the cave. He glanced at Spike, then looked back out into the darkness. His face was white and he was breathing fast.

Spike stood up slowly, bracing one hand against the rock, trying to see past the light of the fire. In the corner of his eye, Harris was shaking his head. Spike ignored him. Without thinking about it, he slipped his shirt off over his head, and stepped out of his boots. Then he walked around the fire and out of the cave, into the darkness.

There was nothing out there. Nothing he could see, at least—just the open desert and the stars, and no little animals moving around this time. Everything was still and silent. The smell was stronger now, tickling the back of his throat and making his eyes water. It was getting into his gut, making him feel sick and frightened. He stopped breathing. Total silence except for the water in the stream, the faint settling of the fire. Harris's panicky breathing, back in the cave.

Then something dropped to the ground behind him, a small sound like a coin falling, and he turned. Harris was staring at a pebble in the dust just outside the cave. Spike looked at it too, then looked up. It was a few feet above the mouth of the cave, clinging head-down to the rock with dull black claws. It had golden eyes the size of teacups. They were fixed on him, on his face. It was so big he felt like he couldn't see all of it at once, like he needed a minute to take it all in.

He didn't get a minute. It dropped to the ground on all fours and hit him before he even saw it move. He hit the dust and skidded, losing skin on his back. He was in game face and on his feet in seconds, feeling the instantaneous rush—but this time it didn’t make him feel enormous or powerful. This time he felt small and naked. The claws had ripped his chest and belly. Blood was soaking his jeans. He couldn't tell how deep it had gone, because he couldn't feel it properly yet. Just a dull hot ache, and under that, the flower of panic. He wasn't big enough for this, he couldn't win this. He'd already dreamed how this would come out.

Then Harris yelled, and Spike started running before he could think.

It was halfway into the cave, trying to skirt the fire. It was so big it couldn't fit all the way inside. Its back legs and long, flat tail were outside in the dust. Inside, Harris was backed up against the wall, yelling. Spike grabbed one of the back legs at the joint and hauled. In his dream, he'd broken a twelve-foot tiger's back like that. Planted his legs and snapped its spine, but this time it wasn't a twelve-foot tiger. It was twenty feet long, or even thirty, and its skin felt black and oily, and when he yanked its leg it turned with switchblade speed and smashed him sideways into the rock.

His skull connected and he saw stars, then a golden moon. But there wasn't a moon here, and the moon didn't descend like that, getting lower and closer and smelling like acid rain. The moon looked him in the eye, and gently tipped his head to the side. He had a last view of the open desert, the beautiful purple plain where he could have run forever and killed everything in sight. Harris was going to die, he realized. The thought filled him with a miserable fury, so thick he could taste it.

Then there was a sudden jolt, and the moon withdrew. There was something bright and hot beside his face, burning his skin. He flinched and something grabbed his arm. Harris. Harris was half-carrying, half-dragging him over the dust. There was blood all over the place. It had been a stupid idea to bring the deer meat back to the cave.

"Spike." They were stalled, the flaming stick guttering, Harris gasping for breath. Not ten feet away, the golden eyes sank low to the ground and waited. There was a low, purring growl in the air. "Spike, get up. Come on."

He had a bad feeling his guts were coming out, but he rolled onto his side and got to his knees. Harris was holding the burning club in one hand, waving it like a caveman at the monster in the darkness. They were on the wrong side of the fire, the monster side. Harris was shaking, and the club was starting to burn out.

Spike's arms and legs had turned to lead, but he hauled himself to his feet and took the last few steps into the cave, past the fire. Blood ran out of his belly and into the dust in a steady stream. His ears were ringing, and his feet felt very far away. Behind him, Harris crowded into the cave and crouched down to throw more wood onto the fire. Outside, the moons moved closer, then subsided again.

"What the fuck is that?" Harris asked, lighting the end of the club again and swinging it through the air above the fire. His voice was high and sharp with fear. "What kind of giant fucking tree sloth monster kitty is that, exactly?"

"'s not a fucking tree sloth," Spike slurred, sinking down the rock, his legs losing coherence. "'s fast."

"It's a freaking naked mole rat." Harris was tossing handfuls of grass into the fire, wood chips, whatever little things he could find. There wasn't much wood left, Spike realized. "It's the naked mole rat that ate Three Mile Island. Did it come down the _cliff_?"

Spike couldn't see that it mattered where it had come from, so he took the opportunity to study his midriff instead. The claws had opened him up in three neat horizontal slices, exposing some bone and pink bits, and letting out a lot of his blood. Experimentally, he pressed the edges of one slice together, and was hit for the first time by the real pain of the wound. It made him snap his fangs and dig his heels against the stone.

"Oh, Jesus." Harris was staring at him, his mouth open. "Oh fuck, Spike. Are you okay?"

He couldn't talk for a few seconds. When he could, he said, "I'm fine."

"I think you're hurt."

Spike spat blood to the side and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand. "You think?"

Harris was still holding the club at arm's length out into the darkness, staring at him in horror while on the other side of the fire the twin moons rose up and stalked a circle. Spike watched them go round, feeling his own fear drain away. That was it, the monster of his dream. It seemed so familiar now. Right, even. He wasn't afraid of it anymore, just worried that he wouldn't be able to kill it, and it would get Harris. There wasn't enough firewood to last all night. He just needed a little rest, and then he'd get up and have his go.

"Build that up a bit," he said, nodding at the fire. They had to keep the fire high to give him a chance to get back on his feet. An hour or two was all he needed.

Harris looked worried, but threw another handful of sticks on the flames. The moons receded as the fire leapt up. Spike used his palms to make a weak seal over his belly, and closed his eyes. For a little while he drifted.

When he heard Harris say his name again, he opened his eyes. Harris was crouched next to him, looking pinched and pale. The wood was all gone. Spike looked out into the darkness; the moons were still there, watching. He grimaced.

"Guess it's not going to just bugger off on its own."

"I tried foul language." Harris's voice was tight, and he was wearing the half-smile he got when he was really frightened. "So what's Plan B?"

Wincing, Spike unstuck his hands from his gut. "Plan B is, I go kill it."

"Uh-huh. And Plan C?"

Spike was too busy struggling to his feet to reply. Harris caught his arm and helped him. "You're hurt, Spike."

"I'm fine." It was agony to stand up straight. He had a bad moment of feeling like he was going to throw up.

"You're not fine. You're going to get minced." Harris was holding onto him, making things difficult, and he felt a flash of irritation. "Spike, you can't go out there."

"We can't stay in here." He nodded at the fire. "That goes out, we're mole food."

"There has to be—" Harris broke off and looked around the cave. "Okay, there's a switch, right? Secret passageway. Chopper pad, I don't know—"

"I'm going out while there's still a fire," Spike said. "I'm going to kill it. And then we're going to eat roast fucking mole for supper."

Harris stared at him, clearly trying to think of something else to suggest. Finally he said, "Did I ever tell you you're sexy when you're heroic?"

"No."

"Well, now seemed like a good time to mention it."

Spike smiled and held his hand out for the club. "Mind if I take that?"

Harris looked at it almost ruefully, then handed it over. "Spike—"

Spike took the club, examined the burnt-out end, and pushed it into the fire. They should kiss or something, he thought—it would be good to do that one more time. He should say something about the sex, about how it didn’t matter, it was good just the way it was. He should say something true and important, something Harris would remember if he got out of this alive. The kind of thing you said before you went out to kill a giant naked mole rat. All he could think of was, _Next time, get more firewood._

"Spike—" Harris's tone was different, a warning now. Spike looked up. The moons were still there, but the fire was dying down. He raised the club, and saw that the end was burning pretty well now. Well, all right. He turned to Harris. Who wasn't looking at him at all. Who was looking out into the darkness, but not at the golden moon-eyes. At something else—at a faint pale shimmer in the darkness beyond them.

"Is that," Harris asked, "what I think it is?"

Spike squinted at the shimmer. It was growing, getting closer or bigger. It was so dark, and what he was seeing was so unexpected, that he couldn't make it out at first. After a few seconds it stopped growing and just hung there, trembling slightly like a bubble waiting to be blown. Maybe thirty feet outside of the cave, half that from the monster.

"I believe," Harris said, "that _that_ is what we call a deus ex machina."

"''s a portal," Spike said, swinging the club experimentally.

"Potato, potato." Harris was rooting in the fire for another stick; he came up with a little one with a good flame on the end. "Are we running for it?"

Spike gauged the distance again, and pressed his lips together. "I'll back it off, you go through."

"And here I was thinking we should just scatter willy-nilly." Harris lifted his stick high and squinted out into the darkness. "Where is that big fucking nightmare?"

"Don't worry about that. Just go." Spike was already walking out, the club in front of him like a sword, blood pattering in the dust. From the corner of his eye he saw Harris start for the portal at a sprint. His torch went out almost immediately, and he was just prey again, helpless and running.

The monster crouched, coiled, and went for him in silent leap. Spike got between and swung with the club, connecting with a solid, bone-jarring thump. It squalled and hit the dust with its legs pedaling madly, its eyes wide. Then it was up again, impossibly fast, ignoring Spike but going for Harris with its long black claws extended, hooking for him like a bear hooking for a fish. Spike ducked his head and launched himself, crossing its trajectory, the muscles in his belly pulling apart. He meant to connect with it, slam his body into its noggin and knock it down again, but at the last moment it flinched back and he was free and clear. Harris was safe in front of him, the portal right there.

There was just enough time to feel a flash of incredulity, and to wrap his arms around Harris from behind. He twisted them so he passed through first, taking the shock of the crossing in his shoulders and back.

They hit a floor together and slid until they jarred up against something hard. For a few seconds, things were dark and loopy and he couldn't move. He couldn’t unlock his arms from around Harris's body. All he could think was _He's alive._

Then he heard voices, trickling into his head like radio. His eyes cleared. They were lying on the floor of the training room, up against the base of the wall. There was a streak of blood across the court where they'd slid from the portal circle. Harris was coughing, trying to move.

"Oh my God—" That was Red. She was crouching down, touching their shoulders, smelling like electrical magic. "Xander. Spike? Can you hear me?"

"He's in game face," someone said, and Spike thought, _Really?_ He couldn't feel the fangs.

"They're hurt," someone else said. "There's blood—"

Spike's hands finally unlocked, and Harris rolled out of his arms and lay coughing on the floor. Red patted him down nervously, then looked at Spike and gasped. "Oh my God, Spike." She turned and said to someone he couldn’t see, "Get the first aid kit."

 _I'm fine,_ he tried to say, but his mouth wouldn't work and Harris kept coughing, and all he could feel was a leaden sense of loss, as if somebody had already died.

 

 

 

"There's another one," Red said, pointing around the back of the crypt. "He went that way—"

"I got him." Buffy pulled her stake out of the one she'd just dusted, and was immediately tackled from behind by the big one with braces. "Hey, watch it!"

"I'll handle it." Spike left Red and Buffy smashing the big vamp into the granite, and went around back. The vamp he was after was leaping headstones for the woods, his cheap nylon jacket flapping. Spike caught him just before he got into the trees, jerked him around by his hood, and snapped his neck. He crumbled to a fine powder in silence.

Walking back, Spike brushed dust off his shirt and tried not to feel depressed. He'd mostly stopped having the dreams now, the ones where he was broken in half under twin gold moons. His belly had healed ages ago. And things with Harris were more or less ironed out. _I think we should just let it go,_ Harris had said, the day he'd come over and sat on the sarcophagus. _I'm okay, you're okay. The whole pon farr thing was just kind of…_

Spike had waited, staring at the ceiling with the whiskey bottle in his hand. Red had given him a bunch of painkillers, but they weren't working very well.

 _I'd be dead if it wasn't for you,_ Harris said at last. _I know that. I owe you…well, feel free to work out a monthly installment plan._

 _You don't owe me anything._ Spike took a swig from the bottle, enjoying the burn. _I don't know what the fuck I was doing._

 _Well, frankly, I'm a little baffled by some of it too._ Harris wore a rueful half-smile, running his thumb along the edge of the stone lid. _But I know you didn't mean it. It's okay, Spike._

Spike had a brief flash of clutching a warm body against his belly, and couldn't tell if it was from the dream, or the afternoon in the cave. Maybe it was just the memory of holding Harris as they went through the portal. He frowned and took another drink. _So we let it go,_ he said.

 _We do,_ Harris said firmly. He got up and started for the door, moving a little stiffly. Then he paused and looked back. _You sure you want to stay here? I mean, you're all racked up…I've got a spare room if you want—_

 _I'm fine,_ Spike said. _Just need to sleep. Tell them I'll be around again in a few days._

Harris had left, and Spike had dragged himself down to bed and fallen into a deep, dark hole. He'd stayed away from the Scoobies for almost two weeks, waiting for his brain to sort out what had happened. The differences between the desert world and this one. He felt so weak here, like a lightly-sketched outline of himself. No depth, no strength. Running other vamps to the ground was like flipping goldfish out of a bowl.

But he was getting used to it. The dreams were almost gone and his gut was healed and Harris was acting normal around him again. So it was all right, it was all turning out all right, and there was no reason to feel depressed. Portals were a tricky game. A few days in the desert world had been six months here, and Red had been half-crazed with worry by the time she'd finally found them. Besides, it could have been worse. He could have gone through the thing with the Slayer, who probably would have staked him the minute he tried to lay lips on her.

He came around the side of a crypt and almost walked into somebody. Two somebodies, actually. One was a big vamp in an Oakland Raiders jacket. The other was Harris, dangling against the wall of the crypt with his feet three inches off the grass, his stake hand trapped behind him, his head jerked the other way so his jugular was exposed. The vamp was holding him in a full-body press, leaning in for the bite.

Without thinking, Spike reached out and grabbed the vamp's hair at the forehead, snapping his head back. The vamp yelled, dropped Harris, and turned. Spike gave a deep snarl and broke its jaw with his fist. Then he grabbed its hair again, yanked it to its knees, and smashed its face into his knee. It reeled backward and he kicked it over, bent down, and staked it so hard he got six inches of turf.

He pulled the stake free, stood up, and saw Harris still lying on the grass a couple of feet away. No bite marks, no bruises, just a look of confusion on his face. Spike walked over and held out his hand.

"You okay?"

Harris stared up at him, his eyes huge. He seemed taken by surprise, as if it had all happened so fast he couldn't tell quite what was going on. Then his gaze dropped to Spike's hand, and he brought his own hand up automatically and caught hold.

At the same moment, Spike was hit by a wave of sudden lust in the air, like the salty smell of the ocean. It was instantaneous—Harris's eyes on his, their hands clasped together, an immediate, unspoken connection. Spike stood there dumbly while Harris pulled himself to his feet. Their hands stayed latched together. Harris's skin was warm, almost hot.

"Yeah," he said. His eyes were urgent, his breath fast in a new, different way.

"Good," Spike said. They stared at each other. Spike couldn't hear anything except Harris's breathing, Harris's heart.

"Do you want to--?" Harris started, then broke off.

"Yeah."

"Me too."

"Where?"

Harris looked around quickly, as if he thought he might find them a motel in the cemetery. "My place. But we have to tell them—"

"Right."

"Okay, yeah. Come on."

Harris started to go, then turned suddenly back and they were kissing. Harris's mouth was hot, desperate, his hands hard against Spike's jaw. Spike growled in his throat and kissed back, pressing forward so Harris stumbled. That made his heart kick up another notch, and Spike grabbed for his belt. His brain was a confusion of images—the red dust, the body moving beneath his, the tiger writhing in his arms.

"Jesus Christ," Harris gasped, shoving Spike away and wiping his mouth. "I'll meet you there, okay?"

"Yeah, okay." Wiping his own lips, Spike turned and started walking in the direction of Harris's apartment. In the back of his head, he kept replaying the scene: the skin of Harris's neck laid bare, the crunch of bone under his fist. The urgent jab of Harris's hip and dick against his hands.

He lit a cigarette as he walked, and noticed that his fingers were shaking.

 

 

Harris's place wasn’t far off, and he only had to lurk a couple of minutes at the bottom of the stairs before Harris walked up past him.

"Hey." He stepped into the light, and Harris stumbled back against the railing in surprise.

"Holy shit. What are you, Lord Voldemort?"

"Not my fault you don't look where you're going."

"You could try to be a little less…sinister."

"I'm sinister?" Spike felt genuinely surprised, and a little flattered. "You're just saying that."

Harris paused, his brow furrowed and his mouth half-open. Then he shook his head. "No, you know what? I'm not even going to get into that. Because that way lies a long and frustrating wrangle, and what I actually want is sex."

"Sex I can do." Spike flicked his cigarette into the darkness and started up the steps. "I'm good at sex."

"And you're classy, too," Harris muttered, sorting out his keys. But at the same time, the smell of lust came off him a little stronger. Spike walked up the steps and stood behind him, watching while he tried the key in the lock. The back of his neck was fascinating, bare and personal. Spike leaned forward and breathed in.

"You're smelling me," Harris said.

"Yeah."

"That's…not unhot."

"You smell good."

Harris left the keys hanging from the lock, turned around, and said, "Bingo." His pupils were huge, his cheeks were flushed. Spike pressed him to the doorframe and kissed him hard.

Harris's hands were on his face, in his hair, digging under the collar of his coat to get at his shoulders and neck. It felt fucking amazing. The porch light was too bright, and he could hear cars in the street below—it wasn't anything like his dream. But Harris tasted familiar, and his tongue was hot and insistent in Spike's mouth. He was making a low groan in the base of his throat, almost a protest. It was a very good sound, Spike thought dimly, plucking at Harris's shirt.

"Whoah." Harris freed his mouth and used his right hand to scrabble behind him for the key. "I'm thinking we should take this inside."

Spike reached behind Harris's back, pressing their bodies together while he turned the key and opened the door. Harris was radiating heat, throwing it off like a furnace. When Spike pushed the door open, he stumbled back a step and caught himself on the doorframe.

"Tell me something," he said earnestly. "Is it weird to get turned on by someone killing something for you?"

"Depends."

"That's what I thought." Harris took another step back into his apartment. "I figure I'll work it out in the morning."

"Might have a lot to work out." Spike had been in the place before, but he still paused before stepping over the threshold. "Me killing things might be the least of your worries."

Harris frowned slightly. "I've slept with guys before, Spike."

Spike tried to look like he'd seen that coming. "Right, sure. I knew that."

"In Africa. And here, a couple of times. It's not—whatever, it doesn't matter." He pulled his keys out of the lock and held the door open. "Anyway. Yes. Sleeping with you may be a bad idea, but not because I'm straight."

"Yeah?" Against his own better judgment, Spike stepped inside and glanced around. Still the same messy bachelor flat, with the unread newspapers piled by the door. "Why, then?"

"Because you're you." Harris swung the door closed and tossed the keys onto the end table. "Because you're kind of a friend, and you saved my life, and when you do that thing—" He paused, swallowed, and flushed a little more. "That nutty protective thing…"

Spike, smelling lust, sidled closer. "Yeah?"

"It makes me want to, uh…"

"Yeah?" They were so close now he could see the vein pulsing in the soft skin of Harris's throat.

"Do stuff," Harris breathed, and wrapped his arms around Spike's shoulders. They stumbled backward, kissing and stepping out of their shoes. "Bad stuff." They ran into the couch, Harris on the bottom. He let himself fall backward over the arm, pulling his shirt over his head in one motion.

"Bad stuff," Spike said, shucking the coat. "That sounds good."

"Uh-huh." Harris's fingers were on Spike's belt, working fast and clumsily. "That was my thought too."

Spike helped with his belt and zipper, and then he was losing the jeans, and Harris was struggling out of his own trousers, flopping like a fish. Naked, he was fucking gorgeous. Broad-shouldered and solid in the middle, with a solid line of dark hair from his navel to his crotch. Mouth open, eyes wide, smiling. Legs splayed.

"I changed my mind about the jewelry," he said.

Spike smiled and crawled onto the couch, feeling warm skin against his belly and chest. Harris bucked up against him, his dick hot and hard in Spike's groin. It felt incredible. As good as being king of the desert, as good as being the great white shark.

"Listen," he said, one last hesitation still there, like a veil keeping him from the clear view. "What I said, that night—"

"Yeah." Harris's mouth found his throat, and for a second Spike closed his eyes in bliss. Then he opened them again, and pushed Harris away.

"About loving you." He got that far, then just hung there. Harris's face was open, expectant, almost fond. Spike tried to think of something to say, but there wasn't much he knew that could follow that up.

Harris smiled. "You took a mole for me."

"Didn't mean to."

"And yet." Harris's fingers found their way up the back of Spike's neck, into his hair. Soft teasing touches. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think I've listened to anything you've said in years."

Spike considered briefly, then nodded and bent to the pressure of warm hands on the back of his neck. A warm mouth meeting his, warm skin against his own. Somewhere, a red desert wavered into the horizon. Right here, though, was perfection.


End file.
